Enable DRS - VMware Workstation Home Lab Setup Part 12

Nov 12, 2014 • Jonathan Frappier

vCenter is built, now we can start doing some of the cooler things VMware vSphere has to offer; up first - Dynamic Resource Scheduler. DRS can be run in either manual, partially automated or fully automated mode. Partially automated will make initial placements of new virtual machines and virtual machines during power on operations and suggest how to rebalance the cluster. Fully automated, well its fully automated. It will balance cluster resources based on how aggressive you want it to be. For a deeper dive into DRS, check out the Clustering Deep Dive book, basically the bible for all things HA and DRS.

To enable DRS, log into the vSphere web client and perform the following steps:

Click on vCenter >> Hosts and Clusters

Right click the cluster you created, in my case CL01 and select Settings

Click on vSphere DRS and click the Edit button

Click the Turn ON vSphere DRS checkbox

Give I have only two hosts, I have left DRS Automation to "Partially Automated" - in a real use case, there is little reason not to set it to "Fully Automated" - of course you need to understand your environment and its impact before making that decision

If you Click on DRS Automation you can see advanced features and further explanation on the various settings.

When finished, click OK. The cluster will be reconfigured.

So enabling DRS - not to hard; understanding all of the settings and how it impacts your environment - well that is typically the harder part. As for our home lab setup, we are ready to setup vMotion - a requirement for DRS to be fully automated!

The home lab is getting close! With the vCenter Server Appliance deployed and basic configuration done, its time to get vCenter setup - AD permissions, Data Center, Cluster and adding hosts to the cluster. While there are only 2 hosts so far in the home lab, its still good to get an idea of all of the functions / features so here we go.

So you’ve got vCenter up and running and hosts added, it’s time to enable the cool things vCenter can do - namely vMotion, HA and DRS. I’ve gone back and forth on how I wanted to present vMotion and networking in the home lab. On one hand many existing deployments are likely running 1Gbps, though newer ones are likely to start with 10Gbps as prices have dropped. After a quick Twitter chat I decided to move forward as I would if I had 10Gbps networking and not have separate physical interfaces in my host for different traffic types.